11 comments:

Well, in the long run (if there IS a long run at this point), Dad29 has a point.

The Baby Boomer generation, in all their self-absorbed, narcissistic glory have fucked this country with bad decision making. There has been no "country first" mentality from that generation, or if there has it was in limited supply. They've cannibalized future generations to make their lives easier, and they'll continue to do so until they're ALL FUCKING DEAD.

They want to retire rich, yet still collect Social Security and benefits from MediCare, yet they've aborted and contracepted away a significant portion of the workforce which would've been able to pay taxes to keep those things afloat. Instead, Generation X -- my generation -- will probably be the first to take it up the ass without those programs and no safety net to ensure we don't have to work until we die.

The Baby Boomers have lived up to their name. They're been immature, and blown everything reasonable to smithereens, and the rest of us will have to clean up their sorry messes even as we're obligated to wipe their asses in their decrepit retirement homes.

Hey, I'm up for slamming the Boomers, but I think that I'd rather do it for the way they've systematically got the biggest public program/infrastructure benefits at each stage S of their lives, followed by then getting Taxpayer Religion at stage S+1 and whinging about the costs of whatever program they no longer feel the need for. (The limiting case will be TJ's example of Social Security in old age, for which S+1 is relatively cheap, and voting privileges sharply curtailed, modulo election shenanigans.)

The bit about abortion and contraception looks more like religious convictions transmogrified into economic conjectures.

Emily: TJ: Did you just blame the current state of Social Security and similar programs on abortion and contraception?

No, I believe I blamed it on the Baby Boomers. I think their selfishness and their me-and-only-me attitude led to the wide-spread use of contraception and abortion on demand, so that makes it a symptom of the overall larger disease called Baby Boomerism.

Look at every Western country (and Japan) and you'll see that birth rates are abysmally low. So low that many countries are now paying their citizens to have children, in the hope that they'll eventually have a large enough workforce to tax so they can continue to pay for their social programs. Whether that works or not, is anyone's guess.

As for the "unwanted children", that's an entirely separate (but important) issue, which really has nothing to do with the fact that wanted or not, those children could become productive citizens and help shoulder the financial burden the rest of us are currently carrying around.

PS: Sorry for the "salty vernacular". I guess my hackles really got raised in regards to this issue today. Sawwy!